ABSTRACT
John Berryman believed that his life of trials was patterned from the age of eleven, when his father committed suicide, but his mother had first and long dominated his destiny. A troubled and powerful woman, she herself inherited a famous grandfather and parents who were divided too soon after her birth. Although her lineage was entirely a southern one, Martha was born on Sunday, 8 July 1894 in Du Quoin, Illinois, where her mother had chosen an ill-judged time to visit friends; Martha’s kin sometimes teased her for being born a ‘Yankee’. Except for the fact that her father, Alvin B. Little, gave her a bound edition of Shakespeare as a consolation present during an early bout of typhoid, he lacks a positive showing during her childhood: by the time she was five, he had deserted the family. As a possible consequence, Martha May, his wife, seems always to have disliked or distrusted most men, and lived a proud forsakenness for several decades.
